I've been researching this on my own for weeks without finding anything useable. I need a list of American-style (not Japanese, anime, etc.) character archetypes in American fiction of any type and ...

I have an idea for a book where several characters acquire elemental powers after dying and being resurrected; their powers all reflect the manner in which they died.
One of the characters acquires ...

I have close to no experience of writing, but I have an idea that I would like to make into a short story (if for nothing else, for the sake of the exercise). It is a fantasy story seen from one of ...

I am currently working on a super hero short story in which a hockey player (the protagonist) suffers a brain injury in the first scene which leaves him in eternal pain. In the quickest explanation ...

Some stories begin with a rather full description of say, the main character. Here is a clip from Hello Dolly that describes in (for me) excruciating detail not only about what she does (matchmaking) ...

In my screenplay, I have my female protagonist wear Prada, and perhaps drop other hints of her character, but not act like Miranda Priestly for the first two acts, until she gets a promotion at the ...

I'm currently writing a novel, in which two characters who are old friends are having an argument.
I'm writing the argument to establish who the characters are and what their values are (the argument ...

I am writing a novel in which characters do bad things to one another. For example, I have recently been struggling over a scene of domestic violence.
Essentially, a husband hits his wife, after the ...

I have a character with a little back-story I'd like to dribble in here and there as we go.
I have something sort of specific in mind, and it makes sense for the character, but it doesn't seem like ...

I'm writing a sci-fi/fantasy story and i have quite a number of characters that i want to deploy in the story. However, these characters should each have their own agendas in life, their own internal ...

One of my main writing projects centers around a character rich with vices. Probably chief among them is self-interest, followed by dishonesty. When I say dishonesty, I mean more than lying to get by. ...

In a visual novel my friend and I are writing, I created a female character who is obsessed with making furniture out of (living) people. Yeah, it's weird, but everyone in the story has their quirks. ...

I have to write an assignment in which there's an English character talking with a English as a Second Language (ESL) character. It is turning out really, really badly. I have a general idea of what ...

I have an idea but before i run with it I need to know if you heard of a show going from, let's say, drama to fantasy. I have smooth transitions from one to the other and the B-plot carries through. ...

A problem I have when writing is that all of my characters behavior and speech ends up mirroring that of my own. As a result nearly all of my characters end up being practically indistinguishable from ...

Back when Bill Clinton was President of the United States, Al Franken (formerly a Saturday Night Live comedian, now a US Senator) gave him lessons in comedy. He needed these lessons because the press ...

The core character in my current work-in-progress is an immortal goddess (of the minor kind), who goes increasingly desperate. In her desperation she's about to do something quite terrible, and the ...

How can a character be made to appear witty, or funny? That is, the character amuses other characters, not the reader, who should ideally be impressed with the characters wit. The only way that I can ...

When striving for gender balance in a play: What is more important, balance among the characters or among the actors? (Given that all characters are written as individuals, and not as stereotypes.)
...

I'm translating a short story into English.
1). The protagonist is a woman in her mid-forties. There was a time when she used to copy out verses from poems and paste them on her wall. The people in ...

In the story I'm writing i have a 2k word chapter that will either be attached to my fourth chapter or be a prelude. (prologue? I'm not really sure what the difference is or if there is one.) My issue ...

In this question I asked about whether there was a standardized definition of the term "Mary Sue". However, a related question would be whether the repeated dilution of the use of the term has rid it ...

I've heard the term "Mary Sue" thrown around a lot, and it seems to mean different things to different people, but is always something negative about the way the character is written, not necessarily ...

I'm writing a story targeted towards children in which the protagonist is a young girl. I find that in writing her dialog and the narrative, I'm producing a lot of very long sentences, to the point ...